Yes, some people suggested work, or tungsten, lights. These are
good for me since my parents have one and I bet a few naighbors do
too. But these things have 500W bulbs which imo are way too bright,
even whem bouncing the. But what do I know, are they? Is it better
for me to go buy 100W tungsten bulbs to replace the 500W ones? How
mahy should I buy? 2? And how should I bounce them? Put each one on
one side and point it at teh ceiling so the light reflects on the?
also, the ceiling is about 12 feet and its white.

Here is a web site that shows many DIY projects to build lighting gear cheaply out of PVC tubing. It may be too involved for your setup, or not, but it may give you ideas.

In addition to a shoot-through diffusion screen, you can make reflectors out of white foam core you can buy real cheap at an office supply store (white reflectors tend to give softer light, silver reflectors tend to give harder light, to start out, I would recomend white over silver):

The advantage of hot lights (continous lights) is you can easily see what the resultant shadows look like (studio strobes have modeling lights to serve the same purpose, but with hot-shoe flashes, it often is a case of fire, adjust, fire, rinse, lather, repeat). You might borrow one or two lights and just see what kind of exposure you are getting and take test shots (in your own house).